Yup. The 1980 movie. I haven't seen this flick since it appeared on TV when I was a kid- since the early 80's. The other night, I decided to see if I could find it out there... and I think it was on Amazon. Also on YouTube. I was impressed that they decided to spend money to clean up the negative; picture quality wasn't bad at all. Now... how well has it held up? Lets be real: it didn't even hold up well for 1980. After all, this was a low budget Roger Corman film that was never meant to go toe-to-toe with Star Wars. The model work was a little better than I remembered... some of the animation (laser blasts, etc.) was worse than I remember... and the laser sound FX made me cringe. Sets were cheesy... and it never occurred to me that most ships in this universe were pretty good size but only consisted of a small 1 person room in the cockpit. And "Nel" is on my list of favorite sci-fi ships. People see a ship with boobies... I have always seen a snail. I guess you could call it an easter egg- Robert Vaugn was in the Magnificent 7 as well... but he didn't look like he wanted to be in this film. Sounds bad? Again: Corman's cheap 1980 take on the Magnificent 7. It wasn't horrible. A fun little watch as long as you go in knowing what this is.
Early 80s Sybil Danning in a space Valkyrie outfit, so I can't complain. I just rewatched this around New Years when I found out Vudu had it as a "watch free with ads" title. I'd consider buying it (and more Corman films) if the Blu-ray was a little more discounted.
I also have a soft spot for this movie. It’s The Magnificent Seven in space. That’s always going to hook me.
Love this movie. The early 80's had some cheesy but good sci-fi and fantasy movies. This one, Dragonslayer, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Krull and Spacehunter.
Toe-to-toe, no, but it was meant to cash in on a public starved and waiting for more Star Wars. Much like Battlestar Galactica, although that was better than this. And on the list of cheeseball sf/fantasy movies of the '80s, don't forget Ice Pirates. Also, I'm assuming no one mentioned Flash Gordon because it was legitimately fantastic.
I don’t really see them as cheesy either. Like you said, they’re just good films. It would be nice if Disney actually made movies like Dragonslayer nowadays. I love The Last Starfighter. Its special effects don’t really hold up, but I think it holds up better overall than the original Tron movie. Special effects aside, I think it’s a good coming of age story with some good performances.
I read not so long ago that if they'd not had so many production issues they were planning to add shadowing and offer after effects to the Space ships in the Last Starfighter. I don't recall the exact resolution but the main ship was rendered in some astronomically high resolution (something like 20K I think) as they didn't have the means to compress things back then. So if it was possible to do so a ship rendered to that standard wouldn't loose detail even on an imax screen. You can kind of tell the Movie was well made though by the bluray edition of it - it's a lot better lit than your typical 80's movie. Another fun little fact is that it's effects were made by the same company that made the trench run & Death Star Plans animatic & a few other things for Star Wars a few years earlier. The only thing that has aged very poorly in that movie is the lack of shading and the enemy ships not getting the same love the Hero "Gunstar" ship did. There is supposed to be good standard fan model out there somewhere - i'd love to see someone re-render some sequences with the after effects placed on it just out of idle interest. The Whole Movie is on Youtube in HD for free too ( I won't link to that) but here is the iconic Death Blossom Sequence.
There is a little cheese in Last Starfighter, but the film is also greatly earnest which can sometimes seem like the same thing. I love the movie and its rousing main theme deserves greater recognition than it has as a great sci-fi anthem. But sometimes films like that need just the slightest amount of cheese - the proverbial sprinkling of Parmesan on an otherwise heady pasta dish - that stops it from getting too self-serious.
